Summer in the City

The sun setting over the Hudson River from the Chelsea Piers on a warm summer night.

Last Saturday morning I walked over to the Union Square Farmer's Market where the bounty of summer is now in full tilt.

I loved the purple flowers in the foreground here and I bought a bunch; I'm not sure what they are called.

After my yoga class at the Chelsea Piers I rode the blue Schwinn over to a flea market on 25th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. It's in a vacant parking lot, and I hadn't been there before. Honestly I wasn't thrilled with the vendors there though I did like these colorful strung beads that look like jelly beans.

Then I stumbled upon a guy with good taste. And that's what the flea market is all about isn't it – the thill of discovery.

I really liked the big iron ornament shaped like a globe with an arrow through it which was standing on the glass case. The vendor said that earlier in the day it was priced at $75 but now it was $40.
Dear reader, it was hard to bicycle home with that heavy iron thing on my handle bars, I'll tell you that.

I put the purple flowers in a pretty green glass vase which I bought at the Salvation Army for $4. I especially like the white flowers which have a purple edge.

They look good at night too.

I put the heavy iron ornament on top of the iron and wood book shelf. I just love it.
It looks good at night as well.


Update: My friend Nannette emails to say that the flowers are lisianthus and my friend Meg suggests that the metal thing is an armillary.

La Cage Aux Folles!

TD and I recently went with our friend Mark to La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway. I was excited to see it because I never saw the original which was up on Broadway in the eighties or the 2004 revival. The original was a big glitzy production and TD said it was in a huge Broadway theater. This scaled down version is more realistic and intimate. In June it won three Tony awards, including best revival of a musical.

La Cage Aux Folles is based on the 1973 French play of the same name, later adapted into a French movie and the American movie The Bird Cage. The Broadway production has music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and a book by Harvey Fierstein. Years ago my friend Abby and I went to see Torch Song Trilogy, written by and starring Harvey Fierstein. After the show we ran into him in a restaurant, and he said to me, in his gravely voice, "You have a nice nose."
Anyhoo, La Cage is about a gay couple, Georges, the manager of a Saint Tropez drag night club and his partner Albin, the drag queen star of the club. The night club features performances by Les Cagelles, the fanastically talented drag dancers. Conflict kicks in when the couple's engaged son wants Albin to leave their home during a visit by his fiancee's ultra-conservative parents.
Georges is played by Kelsey Grammar of Frasier and Cheers fame. He's a wonderful actor and a wonderful singer.

And Albin is played by Douglas Hodge. Who was kind of breathtaking.

Douglas Hodge is a classical actor who is English, married, and has two children. Albin is flamboyant, emotional, funny, dramatic. But the parts that mesmerized me were when he was being quiet, hurt, moved. With a whisper and a sigh and a flutter of a wrist and a tilt of his head he held the entire theater in the palm of his hand. Such a gift. Douglas Hodge won a Tony for this performance in June.

Just before the show started, guess who came streaking down the aisle to take seats across from us in the fifth row? Sarah Jessica Parker, her husband Matthew Broderick, and the guy from Bravo TV, Andy Cohen. Sarah Jessica was wearing a long sparkly cardigan and tank top and skinny jeans. Hair in a top knot. When Obama was running for president, TD and I attended a fund raiser hosted by Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker who spoke eloquently and impressively about her political beliefs. In the theater, her arrival caused a subtle stir in the neighboring audience. Well, it's always good to have celebrities in your midst.

This production's dancing and music and costumes are colorfully entertaining. At the heart of the show though really is a very tender love story between a long time couple who are devoted to each other.

The actors really pulled it off very movingly. It's a universal story, and every body can relate to it. Anyone would enjoy this show. Certainly, SJP was enjoying it, smiling up at the stage with her chin resting on her folded hands. I think if you were a performer on stage it would be quite a treat to have Sarah Jessica Parker beaming up at you. Did you know that from 1977 to 1981 she starred in the Broadway cast of Annie, written by our friend Tom Meehan. That girl can really sing. I wish SJP would do a Broadway musical.

By the curtain call the entire audience was up on its feet clapping. It reminded me of our experience at the end of Hairspray (Harvey Fierstein was in that too) and Hair, when the cast is singing and clapping at the edge of the stage and the audience is standing and clapping – there is at that point no division between the two, it's one happy, uplifting, exuberant Broadway experience.

A Week on Fire Island

(click on photos to enlarge)
TD and I had a wonderful vacation last week in Fire Island Pines as the guest of our close friend Philip. You may remember we visited Philip last Labor Day in his beautifully restored modernist house designed by architect Andrew Geller in 1961. Philip had two other friends visiting, Tom and Jim, and the weather all week was superb. Aren't we lucky?
My favorite walk is always a walk

to a beach.

I took refuge from the hot sun under an umbrella. The clouds glowed in the clear blue sky.

I just love the colors of the beach: blue, white, green, khaki sand. Those are the colors that I wear.

I could watch the colors change all day. It's so relaxing.

5:00: cocktail hour under the shade of the umbrella.

Philip's modernist house is very chic indeed

and carefully edited.

Here is the pool in the morning,

and Jim making dinner at night.

Up on the roof is a fantastic deck for viewing the ocean and the bay.

Yours truly.

The sun set slowly over the Great Bay

sinking down below the horizon

until it slipped away.

Heaven on earth.

Coco & Igor

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as Igor Stravinsky and French actress Anna Mouglalis as Coco Chanel.

TD and I are now enjoying a beautiful week at the beach but before we left New York last week I had the chance to see the movie Coco & Igor, which recounts the short love affair between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. My most popular and most visited post is about Coco Chanel, and I also enjoyed writing about the movie Coco Before Chanel, so I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Neatly, this movie starts exactly where Coco Before Chanel ends, so they offer continuing stories. Directed by the Dutch-born French director Jan Kounen, and with French sub-titles, Coco & Igor begins in 1913 with Chanel attending the world premier of The Rite of Spring, the revolutionary ballet from the Ballets Russes dance company, with music by Russian composer Stravinsky and choreography by Nijinsky.

You may remember that I previously wrote about the Ballets Russes, so it was fun to see in this movie its impresario Serge Diaghilev nervously pacing along with Stravinsky and Nijinsky before the curtain goes up on the premier in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. What follows is a long extraordinary scene, with the camera swooping over the entire theater, showing how the audience dressed in black tie and elaborate Paul Poiret finery reacts to the discordant, avant garde piece. First there is booing and catcalling, then fist fights break out and finally the police are called in to quell the riot. Of course the Rite of Spring would become a seminal work of art of the twentieth century but at the time it was almost beyond comprehension. Throughout the riot, Chanel sits in the audience looking as if she is fully understands the visionary piece.
Soon Chanel invites the impecunious Stravinsky and his wife and three children to live in her villa outside Paris. There the composer works on revisions for a new production of The Rite of Spring, and, predictably, these two forces of nature begin an affair.

Hanky panky on the piano bench.

The style of Chanel's house and clothes is a pleasure to take in. Everything is elegant black and white – no, it's cream actually. Stravinksy's wife asks Chanel if she likes any colors and the couturier answers, "As long as it's black." Someone in the movie observes that Chanel "makes even grief look chic." Throughout she wears t-strap high heels which is such a flattering shoe. In the very first scene of the movie, Chanel says, "I want to breathe" as she cuts the corset she is wearing with scissors, symbolizing how she freed women from the uncomfortable fashions of the time with her natural designs that followed the lines of the body. Later in the movie she is shown working on a dress in her salon, cutting away at it until she remarks, "There – a strong clean line."

It makes you want to go home and edit your closet.
Stravinksy wears a lot of band collar shirts and vests – I like that look.

At one point Chanel travels to Grasse in the south of France and works on the formula for her new perfume with the Russian perfumer Ernest Beaux. He shows her five samples, and she chooses the fifth so she names it Chanel No 5; we know now that it becomes the bestselling fragrance of all time.

The affair with the composer progresses until Stravinsky's wife and children become aware of it, creating a sad and unhappy situation. During an argument Chanel and Stravinsky fight about who is more powerful: "You are not an artist, Coco," says Stravinsky, "You are a shopkeeper." I think he is wrong here: Chanel was an artist and her medium was clothes. But that is the end of that affair.
It's a pleasure to live in the era for the length of the movie, and I didn't quite want it to end: "Please, just one more scene." There is a funny bit about Diaghilev when Chanel walks into his office to see a young man stark naked with his back to the camera facing Diaghilev. "You can go now," Diaghilev says to the boy, and to Chanel: "I'm interviewing for a new secretary." The last scenes show Chanel and Stravinsky in old age: she is in her suite at the Ritz in Paris and he is at the Essex House in New York City where he died in 1971 – they are still thinking of each other.
Anna Mouglalis plays Chanel throughout as regal, cold, and imperious, gliding through the rooms of her villa with little emotion.

Chanel with Diaghilev on the left.
After the movie was over, I was questioning that portrayal of Chanel. Even from clips you see of Chanel on tv, she is scrappy and garrulous, fast with the quips and quick to lose her temper. I think Chanel was more hot than cold, but that is my observation. Maybe some one who knew Chanel could tell us! In any case, I did the enjoy the movie very much and recommend it to anyone who loves beautiful things.

A Trip to the Brooklyn Flea

Fantastic window boxes on Lafayette Street.

TD and I went to Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon to visit a friend in Fort Greene, a neighborhood near Pratt Institute of Technology, the renowned school of art and design. We stopped first at the Brooklyn Flea. You may remember we went to the indoor Brooklyn Flea over the winter in the cold weather. The outdoor one is great too, located in the sports field of a Catholic high school on Lafayette Street.
Darlings, it was hot. I have lived in New York City a long time, and I don't remember it ever being this hot. On Saturday it was almost too hot to stop and take pictures, but I snapped out a few.
I loved this wooden rolling rack. I asked the vendor about it. She said, "Are you a shop owner?" Do I look like a shop owner? Perhaps. No, I said, just admiring. She said it was an antique rack from a shoe factory. I think it would be great piled high with books. You could roll it around the house with you. But I have no room. It had funny tilted wheels, can you see those? I hadn't seen those before, but she said they work perfectly fine.

Out on the sidewalk a guy was hand-cutting silhouette portraits out of black paper. He had a long line of customers.

Right out of Charles Dickens. So charming.

Back inside the market, I stopped at this vendor. I liked the old clocks and watches, and it was located under a shady tent. A pleasant place to escape.

Out in the sun I spotted another rolling cart

with similar tilted wheels. I wonder what those are called.

Then, these oversized industrial carts. But who would have room? I suppose if you lived in a big loft you could put your artist's supplies on them.

The Brooklyn Flea attracts the best-looking people in New York, boys and girls. It's really fun for people watching, with lots of style going on – the style is like a combination of New York City, Chilmark, Mass., and Pratt: very confident, natural, easy, American. One girl was wearing a cropped vintage cotton top, boy's pajama shorts and a straw hat with its wide brim tilted over one eye. Chic. You have to know what you're doing to pull off something like that.

A Trip to Chelsea Market

The new Anthropologie store, with Prince Lumber across 15th Street.

I recently had the chance to go through the great Chelsea Market which is located two blocks away from us, between Ninth Avenue and Tenth Avenue, and 15th Street and 16th Street. The building was originally constructed in the 1890s and was a factory which housed the ovens of the National Biscuit Company. In the 1990s it was bought and developed and redesigned into a food concourse filled with wonderful vendors selling fresh produce, meat, fish, wine, imported Italian goods, all kinds of good things. It's an entertaining destination. If you are visiting New York, don't miss the Chelsea Market.
The developer and designers have wisely and sensitively retained the industrial character of the building with exposed pipes and beams, and at the same time made it modern and comfortable. I love that style, which is called Industrial Chic or Rough Luxe, and mixes materials like wood, metal and brick.
The front door area of Chelsea Market on Ninth Avenue has recently been redesigned. I really like the oversized industrial metal light shades crowded together. Wood signage with metal plaques of companies in the building hangs on the weathered brick wall.

This Chelsea Market sign is crafted in metal and curves perfectly to fill the space.

The shiny metal elevator doors are etched with designs. The frame that holds the doors is a dull, sculpted metal. These metals contrast with the soft look of the worn brick.

Going up.

An Anthropologie store recently opened in the Chelsea Market in a big space which was a florist that we really liked. I'm a fan of Anthropologie too – they do some clever things. For example, in the new store this metal column has been camouflaged and collaged with scraps of newspaper, burlap and floral fabric.

Fabric was draped haphazardly over the back wall; I liked the white country table in the foreground.

Back out on the concourse, I admired the light fixtures. They look like Art Deco, from Paris.

A funny photography show was mounted on the walls. I believe facial hair was the theme.

I picked up some tilapia for dinner at the good fish market.

On the way out I stopped into Anthropologie again and saw a wonderful coffee table made out of an artist's paint-splotched surface mounted on rolling wheels. Behind it was a couch covered with flower-printed linen. I think that's a great way to live.

I think the whole Chelsea Market is a great way to live.